Bad guitar tone from client

austinhue

austinhue

Member
Feb 28, 2011
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I'm providing a mix for this band located across the country and I requested all the tracks, mentioning that DIs would be preferable. I got a DI for bass, but the guitars were not recorded DI and so I was handed a muddy/boxy guitar tone. I've tried simple EQ fixes, different kinds of multiband compression, and a few other specialty plugins. Nothing can really help to give this tone body. It sounds overdistorted, too scooped, and poorly mic'ed. Plus the tone is just not superb, it sounds like when I was 16 and I tried to reamp out of my Fender 112 combo with an SM57 positioned 4 inches away and pointed at the edge of the speaker.

It's usable but it's dragging the whole mix down; in a perfect world I would have been able to reamp myself (or at least be there for the engineering). Short of asking them to retrack and get back to me later (I'm doing this project for free), what would you recommend I try?
 
Tell them to retrack it since you ARE doing it for free :p
But seriously, tell them that if they want a good product, then they would take the time to retrack it and provide DI's.
You can't salvage a bad guitar tone in most cases.
 
you track it yourself... or find someone who can play the parts in an effort to capture adequate guitars. you can just blend the original guitars with the new ones and just chalk it up to being a good producer while thinking ahead for future clients. (that's the name of the service industry game) =\

you win some, you lose some.
 
Vinny said:
Tell them to retrack it since you ARE doing it for free :p
But seriously, tell them that if they want a good product, then they would take the time to retrack it and provide DI's.
You can't salvage a bad guitar tone in most cases.
Click to expand...

this too... but i think you should mix them a winner before ever complaining about the resources/provided assets.

example:

mix it, then give it to them... if they like it; then tell them you can do MUCH better if they re-track the guitars and bass (or whatever).

you don't want them to feel like they made a mistake because you want there business in the future. so run the ideas by them after you have aced the proxy mix.
 
Copy the track twice, apply a parametric notch filter, one low to one, and one higher up to the other. Like really high Q on the filter. Pan those Left and Right of the main track x%. Put delay on the bass filtered 10ms, but chorus on the higher up one.

So effectively we are trying to widen the sound by multi-amping it and providing more spatial control over the tone. Faced with the same situation that is what I would try. or something along those lines. Keep in mind i've done minimal recording, but just thinking of some things to try.
 
Faced with the same situation that is what I would try. or something along those lines. Keep in mind i've done minimal recording, but just thinking of some things to try.
Click to expand...

hmm :guh: yehh, widening the sound will just make it sound "wider-worse" ...and there are much easier ways to "widen" guitars. duplicating the same signal is not one of them.

not trying to be a jerk but none of this is intuitive in an effort to resurrect quality to a guitar tone. it will only reduce the quality to its detriment.

also, "keep in mind i don't really know what i am talking about, so try all this..." is a really good way to throw a wrench in the gears (as it were).
 
Thanks for the advice guys, I think I'm going to go ahead and retrack everything myself (gasp!) and either mix my performance in quad-track style or get rid of theirs altogether... It gives me an icky taste in my mouth, but I see where you're coming from (Tim) with the whole "don't make fun of your client's guitar tone" mindset. In addition, I don't want to play the whole "I'm the mixing engineer, bow to my will and retrack it now" card, especially because it is a casual, free project, and to be honest I should have insisted on DIs in the first place if I have no clue how anything was tracked.
 
austinhue said:
Thanks for the advice guys, I think I'm going to go ahead and retrack everything myself (gasp!) and either mix my performance in quad-track style or get rid of theirs altogether... It gives me an icky taste in my mouth, but I see where you're coming from (Tim) with the whole "don't make fun of your client's guitar tone" mindset. In addition, I don't want to play the whole "I'm the mixing engineer, bow to my will and retrack it now" card, especially because it is a casual, free project, and to be honest I should have insisted on DIs in the first place if I have no clue how anything was tracked.
Click to expand...

why quad track? ...that's kinda gimmicky don't you think? :err: double track! but get as many takes as possible. that way you can make decisions about how you will mix it later. :cool:

the best engineer is the most persuasive. make them think it was their idea and you are swimming, pretty. ;)
 
further ..... what I suggested is building a tone control with 3 total tracks (bass/mid/treble) - but using delay & pan positions so the ear perceives them as unique sources. Tried it and it works great. I have 3 tracks here off one Line6 Spider amp recorded a few days ago. I had to compress the bass portion pretty well to prevent too much blowing up there. But it took a fairly lifeless sound into something bigger for sure.

Audio processors do similar tricks i think.
 
what?

- that is really fishing!

multiband compression/parametric additive/subtractive equalization... these are ways to fix "guitar tone" not creating haas effects or delineated widening. those will create a specific disparity that could only result in an unusable "over processed" sound.

i will also say that ...maybe i am wrong. you say that you have done it. so maybe if you give us examples that are results oriented? it would be interesting to hear/see this method to fruition, otherwise it just seems like an unrealistic over-processed guitar sound.
 
SharkGTS said:
further ..... what I suggested is building a tone control with 3 total tracks (bass/mid/treble) - but using delay & pan positions so the ear perceives them as unique sources. Tried it and it works great. I have 3 tracks here off one Line6 Spider amp recorded a few days ago. I had to compress the bass portion pretty well to prevent too much blowing up there. But it took a fairly lifeless sound into something bigger for sure.

Audio processors do similar tricks i think.
Click to expand...

Sounds like cutting up one shit tone into a bunch of separate shit tones.
 
I see things differently than most, but troll??? balls man.

Anyway, tooks some tracks that were recorded by Quigs (kid in the orange) on Sunday.. this one here

Starts with a single scratch track from the $200 buck line6 amp direct input 1/4 off the front panel. this is the raw recording nothing on it, drums are straight up no augmentation or samples or even phase alignment, no compression etc.

OK opens with the one guitar, 9 seconds I add in my mid/highs track (#2) and finally the body/lows track #3 is added when the drums kick in. I turn off the #2, #3 tracks twice so you can hear the native single track.

http://www.jagersport.com/githack.wav 40 MB so it will take a bit to download. Wear good headphones and CRANK IT!!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
SharkGTS said:
Starts with a single scratch track from the $200 buck line6 amp direct input 1/4 off the front panel. this is the raw recording nothing on it, drums are straight up no augmentation or samples or even phase alignment, no compression etc.

OK opens with the one guitar, 9 seconds I add in my mid/highs track (#2) and finally the body/lows track #3 is added when the drums kick in. I turn off the #2, #3 tracks twice so you can hear the native single track.

http://www.jagersport.com/githack.wav 40 MB so it will take a bit to download. Wear good headphones and CRANK IT!!
Click to expand...

Nothing personal, but Clockwork said it already better than me:

Clockwork said:
Sounds like cutting up one shit tone into a bunch of separate shit tones.
Click to expand...

If the sound sucks at source, it won't turn any better by doing this what you are doing.
 
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